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Me: And don’t come at me with your kindly voice of reason right now about why I should take a chance. Respecting what she wants is the best way for me to handle this. The safest.
Margot: Safest for who?
Me: Margot.
Margot: All right, I’m done. I promise. Will you call me if you want to talk?
Me: Yeah.
Margot: No, you won’t, but I appreciate you saying so.
Margot: Robby and I would make excellent British grandparents, you know. Maybe we can come visit you someday, and you can show us your mountains over there.
After telling her I’d love that, I set my phone down and stared across the barn, the sound of birds filtering through all the noise in my head.
The safest for who?
A question I didn’t really want to answer.
You, a voice whispered in the back of my head. It’s safest for you.
Ignoring that, I stood back up and finished staining the finished spindles. Walking back to the house about an hour later, I pulled up my email and smiled as I scrolled through the pictures from Margot and Robby.
I hadn’t even been home for two weeks, and on a day like this, it felt like a fucking year. That was the best and worst thing about those kinds of experiences. The moment you remove yourself from your day-to-day life, the days stretch out longer and slower. I always felt like I could breathe differently the precise moment I got away. Think clearer. Center my thoughts.
Like Poppy and her lists.
Her thoughts and mine had always been on different trajectories. Mine were locked tight into avoidance of anything that could hurt, anything that could dig its claws into my life, any situation where I might do the hurting instead.
And hers … I had a feeling that Poppy’s thoughts, at least when it came to me, were aimed at something else. She’d made peace with them, almost like she considered her feelings for me as an extension of herself. When we were in the same room, she didn’t fight for my attention, she didn’t ever try to change my mind. Instead, she was keenly aware of what it was between us, and what it wasn’t.
I showered, trying to keep any thoughts of her out of my mind, to limited success. God, I couldn’t even think about her wrapping her injured wrist without getting half hard.
That’s how bad it was.
I’d probably see athletic tape and immediately get a boner because I’d think about the bones in her wrist, the graceful length of her fingers, the impossibly soft skin and the blue veins running underneath it when I wrapped her hand.
Bracing my hands on the shower wall, I let my head hang under the scaling hot water, viciously wrenching the handle to the right when those thoughts veered past her wrist.
No.
This wasn’t happening.
Because I was an adult, and adults had self-control and didn’t fucking jerk off to thoughts about their friend who was carrying their baby.
When the cold water did the trick, I hopped out of the shower, toweled off, and quickly dressed. By the time I was done, there were some texts from Margot—books her friend said I should read. I glanced at the clock and decided to head into town to get some groceries and stop at the library to look for the recommendations.
I decided to take the truck since I’d have food and books. I patted my bike seat when I passed it because it was a gorgeous day—perfect for a ride.
The library parking lot was quiet when I walked under the tall wood-arched entryway, and I was thankful for it. Just what I needed was some gossipy old lady seeing me check out a stack of parenting books.
At the front counter, a friendly-looking clerk in her mid-thirties asked if I needed any help, and I shook my head, content to wander the aisles rather than tell her what I waslooking for. The first row I entered was the romance books, and I grimaced when she tilted her head out to the side to watch what I was doing.
A kiosk held a computer at the end of the row, and I pulled up Margot’s text, punching the computer keys with my pointer fingers until I could search for the first of the books. My mouth moved quietly when I found the location information, scanning the end caps to see where I needed to go next.
An elderly couple passed me at the end of the romance aisle, the wife’s arms stacked high with options.
She smiled at me. “Gotta stock up for the weekend, don’t we?”
